… Says Media Report Unfounded, Misleading
SAN FRANCISCO, December 04, (THEWILL) – An All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship aspirant in Benue State, Prof. Steve Torkuma Ugbah, Thursday, faulted a media report, to the effect that he has been barred from the party’s Governorship Primaries earlier scheduled for Wednesday but which for some reasons have been rescheduled for Friday, December 5.
Ugbah, who was the party’s governorship candidate in the 2011 guber-election and a leading contender for the state APC ticket for the 2015 election, maintained that he is still in the race, urging his supporters to ignore the media report, which he described as misleading and unfounded.
In a statement signed by his Media Adviser, Simon Imobo-Tswam, Professor Ugbah said; “It is possible that the story is also in other dailies, but the one in Daily Telegraph attributes the origin of the story to the State APC Chairman, Mr. Abba Yaro, and quoted him as saying Ugbah has been excluded from the race, and that although he has bought his Nomination Form, and has been duly screened, Ugbah “remains on his own.”’
The statement however maintained that “Prof. Ugbah wishes to state categorically, unambiguously and unequivocally that: The story is not true; It is not only baseless, wicked and satanic, it is calculated to mislead his teeming supporters across the state who are gearing up to give him the party’s nomination tomorrow or anytime the state exco permits one to be held.”
According to the statement, “Abba Yaro has no power, authority and locus, either as the State Chairman of the APC and/or an individual, to stop, disqualify or bar Ugbah from contesting in our party’s Primaries, now rescheduled for tomorrow, Friday December 5, 2014.
“There is no provision in our party’s guidelines or constitution as well as the nation’s constitution that gives Abba Yaro (or anybody by whatsoever designation in the state exco) the power, right or privilege to disqualify/bar any aspirant, least of all, an aspirant of Prof. Ugbah’s calibre, who, besides purchasing and returning his Expression of Interest/Nomination Forms, has been duly screened and passed by the APC Governorship Screening Committee, sitting Ilorin, the Kwara state capital.”
“First, he was refused the Nomination Form after paying the statutory fees on grounds of a bogus and non-existent “Handling fees). That pathetic attempt to extort money from him collapsed when the National Secretariat of the party received Ugbah’s nomination papers, and wished him luck. Today, it is this phoney statement about Ugbah being debarred. It does not get weirder.
“In the light of the foregoing, Prof. Ugbah wishes to call on his teeming delegates/party faithful as well as his supporters and sympathisers across the other political parties to disregard the said story or stories, in totality, whether they are in print or verbal.
“Ugbah wishes to assure them, and very powerfully so, that he, Steve Torkuma Ugbah, the leading contender for the governorship ticket of our great party, remains very much in the race. These desperate antics only confirm him as the candidate to beat.”
Ugbah wishes to further assure his increasing army of supporters that the desperate, but doomed campaign to stop him, at all cost and by all means possible, by Abba Yaro and/or the State exco, acting independently or following the script of any god-father or god-mother, cannot stop his determined quest to vie for the nomination of his party so as to rescue both his party, the APC, and Benue state from 16 years of democratic misrule and arrested development.
“Prof. Ugbah, who is only asking for a level playing ground from the state APC (which is not too much to ask), finds it curious that Abba Yaro, an Idoma man from Zone C is not zoning the governorship slot to Zone C, but is spiritedly embarrassing the party with his morbid obsession with Ugbah or his unstoppable candidacy.”
